In Mandrake Falls, Longfellow Deeds receives the news that he is the sole beneficiary of a $20,000,000 fortune after his fabulously wealthy uncle, Martin W Simple is killed in a motor accident in Italy. Already a reasonably successful local businessman and poet, Deeds doesn't really feel the need for anything extra in his life, but he is convinced by his uncle's lawyers to go to New York, where he meets the journalist Babe Bennett, who sets out to expose Longfellow's extraordinary, if eccentric life - in exchange for her own column in the newspaper. Will she regret it?